Men’s Four (M4-) – Final

A-Final

Re-watch the live footage here

This boat class started off with 15 entries and they had been narrowed down to the final six in this A-final. From yesterday’s semifinal times less than 1 ½ seconds separated all six crews. This was going to be tight. It was Belarus who got an early lead rating 45 at the start. This crew has raced together for a number of years as part of their sweep squad and they still had the lead at the first 500m marker. The Netherlands One crew sat just with them in second. But the whole six boats were less than two seconds apart and anyone had a chance of getting into the lead.

Then Belarus started to drop back as the Netherlands One and Two took over in the top two spots. These Dutch crews were part of the men’s eight that took bronze at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The Netherlands Two crew then moved to a full boat length lead over Netherlands One with the remaining field spread by just a second. Hendriks, Roell, Knab and Versluis of the Netherlands Two had 200m left to row and they were still in the lead. Belarus went to 42 and closed on the Dutch with the sprint for bronze a four-way affair.

Results: NED2, NED1, BLR, GER, GBR2, AUT

Boudewijn Roell, Men’s Four, Netherlands, Gold
“Really happy to get the win, we thought Netherlands 1 would edge it as they beat us twice in training. From now I think we’re going to have an eight and a four and we’ll see who goes into which.”

 Kaj Hendriks, Men’s Four, Netherlands, Silver,
“We are not very happy with the result but we are happy and proud of our teammates. Our previous races had very fast starts, but I think we saved too much this time. It was hard to tell where we were in the race as we had the far lane but we just focused on our own race. We aren’t sure for the next world cup which boats we’ll be in, probably the eight and the four.”

Mikalai Sharlap (s), Belarus, Bronze,
“The race was very hard, there are a lot of good crews but yes we are happy with the result. It is a good start to the season we will continue to race the four in the next World Cup.”

B-final

Romania got away the quickest in this race. They had missed out on competing in the A-final by just 0.26 of a second and they must have wanted to prove something today. This young Romanian crew, stroked by 19-year-old Ciprian Huc remained in front through the middle of the race with the closest challenge coming from Netherlands Three. Romania kept their speed finishing at 40 strokes per minute.

Results: ROU, NED3, RSA, DEN, RUS, CHN2